In what now feels like looking for needles in a comedic haystack, I\u2019ve been trying to find older comedic works that in some way engage with mental health, in either a funny or serious light. I\u2019m also trying to primarily find older works, because for my project, I want to see an evolution of portrayals, and how different afflictions were treated in comedy. The problem that I\u2019m running into with these older works is what I like to call the \u201cEnglish teacher problem.\u201d The English teacher problem is the overanalysis of fiction, or anything really, to the point of huge jumps to conclusions. The quintessential example is something like \u201cthe curtains were blue to represent the main character\u2019s sadness,\u201d when in reality, the curtains being blue could just be an extraneous detail. I write all that essentially to say that its harder than I\u2019d hoped to go back and pluck out good primary sources from obscurity, because of this problem of interpretation.<\/p>\n
All that is to say, however, that I think I\u2019ve got a good one this week (although truth be told even this feels like a stretch). Today, I\u00a0present to you all Ted Stryker, and the fantastically hilarious 1980 comedy movie Airplane!<\/em> as this week’s focus. In Airplane!<\/em>, Ted Stryker is a former fighter pilot, who is suffering from PTSD after fighting in \u201cthe war,\u201d and because of this, suffers from a \u201cdrinking problem,\u201d and has a pathological fear of flying. As many wacky things occur on the titular airplane, Ted is forced to face his trauma, and land the plane after the pilot is incapacitated. While I\u2019d venture to guess that this is not the most accurate depiction of PTSD in media, I think we can learn something about how PTSD was seen in the 1970s and 80s from how his trauma is addressed episodically, and how it is (relatively) easily resolved in crisis.<\/p>\n